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Tuesday, AMD announced firmware updates for its new Ryzen 3000 desktop CPU line to improve both its highest boost clock speed and its willingness to "idle" at lower, more power-efficient speeds when the processor's full power is not required. The improvements are in the most recent beta reference firmware and are expected to filter down to OEM motherboard manufacturers and become available in about three weeks from now—subject, of course, to testing and implementation schedules of the OEMs.

The announcement also teases a new SDK launch targeted for September 30, which offers APIs for use in monitoring utilities.

Boosted boost

Last week, a survey of more than 3,000 Ryzen 3000 CPU owners showed that fewer than half of those CPUs were capable of hitting the maximum boost clock rate advertised. This really isn't the end of the world—a Ryzen 9 3900X that peaks at 4.5GHz instead of 4.6GHz is only missing out on 2% of its total possible boost clock rate, and even that 2% clock rate does not generally translate to 2% slower application performance. In other words, you're going to need artificial tests to discover the problem—you absolutely would not just suddenly realize, "hey, this isn't as fast as it ought to be!" in the middle of a gaming or content creation session.

There's also more going on with a boost clock maximum rate than just the CPU itself. The maximum clock rate achieved will depend heavily on the CPU cooling system, how expertly the cooler has been installed (eg, neither too much nor too little thermal paste), and even the operating system version, among other factors. With all of that said, more MHz is more MHz, and AMD's internal testing shows that the new updates should add about 25-50MHz to the maximum boost clock speed seen on a given system.

Calmer idle

AMD's new reference firmware adds an activity filter that lets the CPU's own boost algorithm ignore "intermittent OS and background application noise" that might otherwise ramp the CPU up into its boost clock. Certain bursty but overall lightweight tasks, such as video playback, application launch, and monitoring utilities, make regular requests for a higher boost rate, even though their overall activity level is low. The activity filter smooths things out for these lightweight tasks, keeping the CPU out of boost mode without harming overall or perceptible performance.

AMD believes this will result in lower core voltage to cores managing such tasks (around 1.2V) but reassures us that this is not a simple cap, and workloads that really do need boost clock and voltage will still hit them as needed.

Monitoring SDK

AMD's new monitoring SDK aims to make it easier to ask questions like "what's my CPU temperature?" and expect consistent, reliable results.

In addition to operating temperature, the 30+ API calls being made available in the initial SDK release include Peak and Average Core Voltages, current and power limits for motherboard voltage regulator and CPU socket, peak CPU speed seen recently, effective frequency (i.e., after adjusting for idle periods: a 4GHz core active 50% of the time would have a 2GHz effective frequency), as well as many arbitrary individual voltage and clock levels.

You can configure up to four comprehensive profiles in Ryzen Master, aggregating tweaks to CPU, GPU, and RAM frequencies and timings.

AMD

This is the onboard Vega GPU configuration screen in Ryzen Master. PhD sold separately.

Although the SDK itself isn't publicly available yet, you can witness some of its API calls in use right now with AMD's Ryzen Master application for Windows, which offers a graphical interface for monitoring and tweaking a bewildering array of CPU and onboard GPU metrics and settings.

AM4 is supposed to be supported through 2020 (4 generations). Therefore, next year the Ryzen 4000 series will release and continue to be supported on AM4 motherboards (with a few exceptions). Is this correct?

My reason is that I want to decide if an upgrade from my 2000 series would be best spent on a 3000 or a 4000 CPU. I won’t know for sure until next year, but if there’s no chance of this theoretical 4000 series, then I might as well get a 3000 at earliest convenience.

AM4 is supposed to be supported through 2020 (4 generations). Therefore, next year the Ryzen 4000 series will release and continue to be supported on AM4 motherboards (with a few exceptions). Is this correct?

My reason is that I want to decide if an upgrade from my 2000 series would be best spent on a 3000 or a 4000 CPU. I won’t know for sure until next year, but if there’s no chance of this theoretical 4000 series, then I might as well get a 3000 at earliest convenience.

My understanding is that yes, in principle 4000 series CPUs will be supported on (some) older AM4 motherboards. But in practice it will probably depend on whether your motherboard manufacturer bothers to keep the firmware updated, and also on whether your motherboard's power delivery/VRMs are up to the task.

AM4 is supposed to be supported through 2020 (4 generations). Therefore, next year the Ryzen 4000 series will release and continue to be supported on AM4 motherboards (with a few exceptions). Is this correct?

My reason is that I want to decide if an upgrade from my 2000 series would be best spent on a 3000 or a 4000 CPU. I won’t know for sure until next year, but if there’s no chance of this theoretical 4000 series, then I might as well get a 3000 at earliest convenience.

If you want and need an upgrade, and can't really justify waiting for more power, I would pull the trigger now.

OTOH if you can limp on for a while, wait and see if the 4000 is still AM4.

At least its just a CPU swap. The biggest hassle will be removing and reinstalling the CPU cooler.

AM4 is supposed to be supported through 2020 (4 generations). Therefore, next year the Ryzen 4000 series will release and continue to be supported on AM4 motherboards (with a few exceptions). Is this correct?

My reason is that I want to decide if an upgrade from my 2000 series would be best spent on a 3000 or a 4000 CPU. I won’t know for sure until next year, but if there’s no chance of this theoretical 4000 series, then I might as well get a 3000 at earliest convenience.

I wouldn't be surprised if that support only extends to the 4 series APU, which would technically be using 3 series architecture.

We'll see, not much point in going to a new platform until they're moving to DDR5, but that is supposedly eminent.

If DDR5 becomes widely available then moving to a new platform makes plenty of sense. If Ryzen 4000 series is stuck with DDR4 then continuing on AM4 seems plausible.

Too little is definitely a thing. Too much is more of a myth (thermally) if the proper clamping pressure is applied. It can make a mess of your socket area which can be a problem if you are using something conductive or capacitive, but thermally it will be fine as long as clamping pressure is right.

Several entities have looked at this. Notably, Gamers Nexus investigated this in depth with everything from "a smidge too much" to emptying a tube onto it. Thermals were the same as long as you had enough to leave decent coverage across the die or heatspreader. Excess just came out the side.

AM4 is supposed to be supported through 2020 (4 generations). Therefore, next year the Ryzen 4000 series will release and continue to be supported on AM4 motherboards (with a few exceptions). Is this correct?

My reason is that I want to decide if an upgrade from my 2000 series would be best spent on a 3000 or a 4000 CPU. I won’t know for sure until next year, but if there’s no chance of this theoretical 4000 series, then I might as well get a 3000 at earliest convenience.

I’ve always wondered about this, and this is a genuine question the answer to which might change my approach to buying hardware: why would you want a single-gen processor bump?

For me, 3000 would actually be a two-gen bump, and I’m actually using a 1700 as a snappy server, and I’m still not wild about getting a 3700, etc. No PCIe 4.0, probably a depressed market for 1st gen Ryzen (I guess).

AM4 is supposed to be supported through 2020 (4 generations). Therefore, next year the Ryzen 4000 series will release and continue to be supported on AM4 motherboards (with a few exceptions). Is this correct?

My reason is that I want to decide if an upgrade from my 2000 series would be best spent on a 3000 or a 4000 CPU. I won’t know for sure until next year, but if there’s no chance of this theoretical 4000 series, then I might as well get a 3000 at earliest convenience.

I would recommend on waiting if you can. While the 2000 series chipsets do support the 3000, you will not be able to take advantage of the 3000s PCI-E 4 support. To get PCI-E 4, you will need a new motherboard. If you can wait another year, wait for the 4000 and get a new mobo then.

AM4 is supposed to be supported through 2020 (4 generations). Therefore, next year the Ryzen 4000 series will release and continue to be supported on AM4 motherboards (with a few exceptions). Is this correct?

My reason is that I want to decide if an upgrade from my 2000 series would be best spent on a 3000 or a 4000 CPU. I won’t know for sure until next year, but if there’s no chance of this theoretical 4000 series, then I might as well get a 3000 at earliest convenience.

I suppose it depends on what board you're running now. If you're running a 2000 series Ryzen on an A320 board, then the 3000 series is already out of reach. Most manufacturers won't upgrade that board's BIOS to handle the 3000 series.

And given the limits of BIOS space, most motherboard makers who have added 3000 series support to their older boards (B350, X370 and the like) have dropped many low level (old Excavator core) AM4 APU's from the supported stack to support the 3000 series chips.

So unless you're running a B450 or X470 chipset, I'd expect to need a motherboard upgrade to handle a 4000 series chip.

AM4 is supposed to be supported through 2020 (4 generations). Therefore, next year the Ryzen 4000 series will release and continue to be supported on AM4 motherboards (with a few exceptions). Is this correct?

My reason is that I want to decide if an upgrade from my 2000 series would be best spent on a 3000 or a 4000 CPU. I won’t know for sure until next year, but if there’s no chance of this theoretical 4000 series, then I might as well get a 3000 at earliest convenience.

I’ve always wondered about this, and this is a genuine question the answer to which might change my approach to buying hardware: why would you want a single-gen processor bump?

Why not, if you can get more cores at the same time? (And have a use for them.)

I'm running a 4770k and it's still plenty fast enough so I feel sad I can't justify a new AMD system just yet. The latest gen AMD stuff is cool.

Recently retired my 3770K for a 2700X, but even there Ivy Bridge was holding it's own in most games. Eventually all the new features (like NVMe) made the upgrade worthwhile. But those 2/3/4th gen chip really had some staying power.

Some folks who got their hands on ABBA (lol) were reporting boosts above the reported max too.

My 3700X (no OC) currently maxes out at 4374MHz, so I guess I should be angry but I don't care. Not that I begrudge those who want exactly what was advertised, but for me it's fairly insignificant. Should also be noted that AMD Cool N Quiet seems to play a role in boost clocks/idle voltages as well, or at least it does on my B450 board. The max boost clocks vary by 25MHz-50MHz depending on the setting, but the idle voltages seem to be more significantly affected. If I turn it Off, it stays between 1.45v-1.5v at all times. With it on Auto, it'll drop under 1v, and turned On it drops far below that. I'm an early adopter so I knew that there'd be kinks to work out so I don't really mind being the guinea pig.

I'm running a 4770k and it's still plenty fast enough so I feel sad I can't justify a new AMD system just yet. The latest gen AMD stuff is cool.

Recently retired my 3770K for a 2700X, but even there Ivy Bridge was holding it's own in most games. Eventually all the new features (like NVMe) made the upgrade worthwhile. But those 2/3/4th gen chip really had some staying power.

Sort of in the same boat as jbrizz- my i5-4460 is doing what I am demanding of it thus far.

- Yes, I'd like to be able to use DDR4.- Yes, I'd like to have proper M.2 NVMe SSD support (my Dell MB apparently has the M.2 wired for PCIe x 1 rather than x4)- Yes, I'd like more than 4 cores/threads

But, as things stand, I don't actually do anything that's pushing my system up against its limits. I'm on modern-ish, but not the latest and greatest, nor most demanding, games. I'm not doing heavy processing, streaming, video editing, etc.

So, my Haswell will keep on keeping on...

Right now, the only real reason I'd upgrade would be "to have cool whiz-bang features" and feed my not-so-inner tech-geek.

I'm running a 4770k and it's still plenty fast enough so I feel sad I can't justify a new AMD system just yet. The latest gen AMD stuff is cool.

I thought this too until I saw how affordable a 12C/24T system was and then temptation got me. The difference is actually very noticeable if you do any sort of development work that parallelizes or even just moderate multitasking.

AM4 is supposed to be supported through 2020 (4 generations). Therefore, next year the Ryzen 4000 series will release and continue to be supported on AM4 motherboards (with a few exceptions). Is this correct?

My reason is that I want to decide if an upgrade from my 2000 series would be best spent on a 3000 or a 4000 CPU. I won’t know for sure until next year, but if there’s no chance of this theoretical 4000 series, then I might as well get a 3000 at earliest convenience.

I suppose it depends on what board you're running now. If you're running a 2000 series Ryzen on an A320 board, then the 3000 series is already out of reach. Most manufacturers won't upgrade that board's BIOS to handle the 3000 series.

And given the limits of BIOS space, most motherboard makers who have added 3000 series support to their older boards (B350, X370 and the like) have dropped many low level (old Excavator core) AM4 APU's from the supported stack to support the 3000 series chips.

So unless you're running a B450 or X470 chipset, I'd expect to need a motherboard upgrade to handle a 4000 series chip.

I've currently got a 1500x on a B350 board which does have a bios update out to support the 3000 series. My current plan would be to upgrade to a 3700x eventually after the 4000 or 5000 series come out when the price drops down enough. If the 4000 is AM4 compatible and I get a bios update I might have to look for one of those but that will be even further out I'm sure.

Staggering amount of people still ignoring AMD with heads stuck between Intel's butcheeks

It'd be easier to recommend AMD if they weren't happy to trip over their own shoelaces.

The Ryzen 3000 chips are good silicon hobbled by the launch glitches. And a lot of what has been hit smacks of a lack of real-world testing prior to launch. On one hand, it's nice to know they also don't like bloatware on their systems, but at the same time, maybe the boost algorithm shouldn't be touchy enough that simply observing the boost behavior triggers it?

Intel may be stuck in a rut trying to hunt their 10nm white whale, but I think this is one of the first times in recent memory that a CPU shipped out with these kinds of issues.

FYI Intel recently issued a pseudo-recall notice for their Apollo Lake chips due to the possibility of premature silicon failure and this is hot on the heels of a similar recall from 2017 for the Atom C2000 Avoton for the same problem.

Staggering amount of people still ignoring AMD with heads stuck between Intel's butcheeks

It'd be easier to recommend AMD if they weren't happy to trip over their own shoelaces.

The Ryzen 3000 chips are good silicon hobbled by the launch glitches. And a lot of what has been hit smacks of a lack of real-world testing prior to launch. On one hand, it's nice to know they also don't like bloatware on their systems, but at the same time, maybe the boost algorithm shouldn't be touchy enough that simply observing the boost behavior triggers it?

Intel may be stuck in a rut trying to hunt their 10nm white whale, but I think this is one of the first times in recent memory that a CPU shipped out with these kinds of issues.

I haven't been having fun hand-holding my 3600 build through this stuff, especially when things like the touchy boost would cause a lot of fan spin up/down cycles. Why? Because nobody added a default hysteresis to the fan controllers to account for the hyperactive boost algorithm that would scream at +600Mhz/1.4V on the Windows desktop every couple of seconds (which why does it need to do that in the first place?). And that impression is likely what sticks with me when I go to do my next build. Doesn't matter that they are going to launch a fix later this month, nearly 3 months after launch.

Uh, what? I have an i7-6700K, and I remember Skylake chips crashing when certain heavy loads were put on it, and it took BIOS updates to fix that too.

And I'm not even going into the Spectre/Meltdown business. So having a processor be a few hundred MHz off rated boost is minor in comparison.

AM4 is supposed to be supported through 2020 (4 generations). Therefore, next year the Ryzen 4000 series will release and continue to be supported on AM4 motherboards (with a few exceptions). Is this correct?

My reason is that I want to decide if an upgrade from my 2000 series would be best spent on a 3000 or a 4000 CPU. I won’t know for sure until next year, but if there’s no chance of this theoretical 4000 series, then I might as well get a 3000 at earliest convenience.

I suppose it depends on what board you're running now. If you're running a 2000 series Ryzen on an A320 board, then the 3000 series is already out of reach. Most manufacturers won't upgrade that board's BIOS to handle the 3000 series.

And given the limits of BIOS space, most motherboard makers who have added 3000 series support to their older boards (B350, X370 and the like) have dropped many low level (old Excavator core) AM4 APU's from the supported stack to support the 3000 series chips.

So unless you're running a B450 or X470 chipset, I'd expect to need a motherboard upgrade to handle a 4000 series chip.

This just isn't true. Most A320 boards have been updated with 3rd Gen support despite not being officially certified by AMD. They'll run even a 3900X just fine (but ofc with a lot of throttling; 3700X is the highest you'd wanna go on A320 for proper perfomance).

AM4 is supposed to be supported through 2020 (4 generations). Therefore, next year the Ryzen 4000 series will release and continue to be supported on AM4 motherboards (with a few exceptions). Is this correct?

My reason is that I want to decide if an upgrade from my 2000 series would be best spent on a 3000 or a 4000 CPU. I won’t know for sure until next year, but if there’s no chance of this theoretical 4000 series, then I might as well get a 3000 at earliest convenience.

From what I understand about how the current support for ryzen 3000 is.

If you are using a (example) 1600 or a 2700 chip on a 300/400 series board that is verified to support the new chip you need to update the bios (possibly in steps if you haven't bothered to keep the bios updated, might be a afternoon project then) and then once you hit the update that supports the chip, drop in the new one and update.

Ryzen 4000 will be ryzen 3000 with all the bugs worked out if Zen gen one is anything to go by.

I'm running a 4770k and it's still plenty fast enough so I feel sad I can't justify a new AMD system just yet. The latest gen AMD stuff is cool.

I know, right? I have a 4790k running at 4.4Ghz and I can't justify an upgrade yet either. Maybe with the next release of Threadripper? Not that I need 32 threads and 5Ghz, but I want new a shiny toys to play with.

AM4 is supposed to be supported through 2020 (4 generations). Therefore, next year the Ryzen 4000 series will release and continue to be supported on AM4 motherboards (with a few exceptions). Is this correct?

My reason is that I want to decide if an upgrade from my 2000 series would be best spent on a 3000 or a 4000 CPU. I won’t know for sure until next year, but if there’s no chance of this theoretical 4000 series, then I might as well get a 3000 at earliest convenience.

I suppose it depends on what board you're running now. If you're running a 2000 series Ryzen on an A320 board, then the 3000 series is already out of reach. Most manufacturers won't upgrade that board's BIOS to handle the 3000 series.

And given the limits of BIOS space, most motherboard makers who have added 3000 series support to their older boards (B350, X370 and the like) have dropped many low level (old Excavator core) AM4 APU's from the supported stack to support the 3000 series chips.

So unless you're running a B450 or X470 chipset, I'd expect to need a motherboard upgrade to handle a 4000 series chip.

This just isn't true. Most A320 boards have been updated with 3rd Gen support despite not being officially certified by AMD. They'll run even a 3900X just fine (but ofc with a lot of throttling; 3700X is the highest you'd wanna go on A320 for proper perfomance).